1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method for producing a wiring harness and an apparatus for connecting a terminal-connected wire.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a process of connecting wires with connectors is necessary for production of a wiring harness. Many automatic inserting apparatuses for inserting terminal-connected wires having terminals at their ends beforehand into a connector housing of a connector have been proposed as specific apparatuses for this connecting process. Japanese Patent No. 3019737 (pages 2-3, FIG. 2) discloses such an apparatus.
Many of these apparatuses are provided with a terminal chuck for guiding the terminal of the terminal-connected wire and a wire chuck for holding an insulated part of the terminal-connected wire near the terminal chuck. The terminal positioned by the terminal chuck is caused to face a terminal accommodating chamber of the connector housing by the terminal chuck and is inserted by the wire chuck. In this way, the terminal is inserted into the connector housing to connect with terminal-connected wire with the connector housing.
However, in the case of a thin terminal-connected wire, there is a danger that the insulated wire is buckled during the inserting operation. Accordingly, there has been developed an apparatus for performing an inserting operation by directly driving the terminal (Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. H09-115642 (pages 1-4, FIGS. 1 to 4)).
These automatic apparatuses are adopted on a production line for automatically producing wiring harnesses (see Japanese Patent No. 3019737)
As a background of the present application, terminal-connected wires and terminals are widely known (Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2002-100242 (pages 3-7, FIGS. 5, 6, 17 and 18)).
Wiring harnesses required in recent years have a high necessity of simultaneously handling a fairly many kinds of terminal-connected wires. In order to meet such a requirement, it is necessary to conduct an automatic production using both crimping terminals having barrels crimped into connection with ends of insulated wires and insulation-displacement terminals having insulation-displacement blades bitten in insulated wires. However, up to now, there has been no automatic inserting apparatus capable of inserting both terminal-connected wires having crimping terminals connected therewith and terminal-connected wires having insulation-displacement terminals connected therewith into a connector housing. Thus, upon building an automatic production line for wiring harnesses, a module for inserting crimping terminals and a module for inserting insulation-displacement terminals need to be arranged in parallel, which increases the facility cost and makes a problem of incapability of increasing serviceability ratios of the respective modules unavoidable.